The German government is preparing billions of euros of new investments into the nation’s semiconductor industry, two months after Intel Corp shelved plans to build a 30 billion euro (US$31.6 billion) chip factory in Magdeburg, Germany.
The new funds would be provided to chip companies to develop “modern production capacities that significantly exceed the current state of the art,” Annika Einhorn, a spokesperson from the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, said in a statement on Thursday.
The subsidies are expected to total about 2 billion euros, said two people who attended an official event about the funding plans this week and speaking on condition of anonymity.
Photo: Bloomberg
The sum would be in the “low single-digit billion euro range,” a spokesperson for the ministry said in response to a query from Bloomberg News, declining to be more specific.
The ministry had published a call for chips companies to apply for new subsidies earlier this month, although the final figures are still in flux. A new government is set to be elected in February and would likely plan its own budget, leaving uncertainty for the chip companies now applying for the subsidies.
Governments around the world have been investing public funds in the chip industry as part of an effort to localize production of components that control everything from cutting-edge artificial intelligence to everyday gadgets. The push comes after COVID-19 pandemic era supply disruptions and as rising tensions between the US and China over Taiwan could interfere with a key source of the essential technology.
The European Chips Act, passed last year, aims to strengthen the bloc’s semiconductor ecosystem and double its market share to 20 percent of global production capacity by 2030.
Germany’s chip sector has faced two major setbacks. Intel’s 30 billion euro chip factory in Magedeburg was on track to be the biggest project supported under the EU’s Chips Act with 10 billion euros in subsidies, but the troubled US company postponed its plans in September.
Wolfspeed Inc. and ZF Friedrichshafen AG also withdrew a planned chips venture in western Germany.
The first rounds of German subsidies under the EU’s Chips Act were granted to Intel and a joint venture between Infineon and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) in Dresden, Germany.
Germany’s economic ministry wants to use the newly proposed funds to subsidize 10 to 15 projects across a range of fields, including the production of raw wafers and the assembly of microchips.
“The funded projects should contribute to a strong and sustainable microelectronics ecosystem in Germany and Europe,” Einhorn said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS